AUGUSTA — Anna Cummins, a consultant with the Bracken County Health Department, spoke to Augusta City Council during its meeting Wednesday night about is plan to create health clinic for students and families.
Bracken County Health Department Director Tony Cox said the clinic was proposed as the health department was looking for a way to expand services and the district wanted a way to better serve the students.
“The health department and the school district have had a partnership for years,” Cox said. “Recently, we started looking at expanding our services offered and we talked with the school district about wanting to provide a school-based health clinic. We wanted the fastest way to get a child seen that was also affordable for the family.”
While the clinic itself is still in the early stages of planning, the Bracken County School District and health department officials have received a planning grant from Interact For Health, a foundation in Cincinnati, in order to research the best course of action.
According to Cox, the plan for the clinic is to be a “one-stop” location for health services that would include medical, dental and other needs.
Cummins said that while the grant indicates that it is a school-based health center, Interact For Health is encouraging the health department to open the service up to the community. At the council meeting Wednesday night, Cummins informed council members about the school-based health center and that it is available for Augusta residents and students of Augusta Independent Schools.
“It was just more to give them information about what we’re trying to achieve,” she said. “We have a committee that’s working on trying to figure out the needs of our community, what types of services they would want at a school-based health center, what hours or days would be open and what types of services that we would want to provide.”
With this school-based health center, Cummins said the intention is not to be a replacement of any current healthcare provider or facility.
AIS Superintendent Lisa McCane said the availability of a school-based health center would definitely benefit students and the surrounding community.
“It definitely, I think, would fill a gap of service for students as far as there’s times where you can’t get in to see a physician at Primary Plus or another provider that they might have,” she said. “It’s going to be specific for schools and the needs that we often have.”
Among the needs that the health center will help to fill, McCane said dental care is especially welcome, as well as immunizations and sports/CDL physicals. Surveys have been sent out to faculty, parents and other community members by the school district to help guide the planning of health care needs.
When hearing Cummins present the idea to the city council, Council member Todd Kelsch said it was a great concept that would fill a much needed void in the community.
“I like that this will be centrally located in the county to service both Bracken County and Augusta school districts as well as families from all over the county,” he said. “Affordable and accessible healthcare is a passion of mine in terms of my public service. I hope to be able to work with a future health center during my term on Augusta City Council.”
Cummins said the hope for the health center is to have it operational by the beginning of the next school year in 2020.
